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Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Wednesday Words: Thoughts on Armchair BEA

For those of you who read this blog or have happened to stumble upon it someway, somehow, you may have noticed an incredible increase in the amount of posting I was doing last week as a result of my participation in Armchair BEA, an online book blogging event for those of us unable to attend the real life Book Expo America in New York.

This was a first for me in that I've never participated in a blogging event before. I'm so new to this whole crazy thing of book blogging that I still feel very behind on the times. I don't do memes or have business cards or host giveaways. There are only so many hours in a day and dollars in the bank, and I'm just not at a point where those things are a possibility. Not that I'm entirely sure about if they're really for me, anyway. Not that it's incredibly likely by any stretch of the imagination, but I do hope that someday it will be my books hitting shelves that bloggers will be wanting to write about =) Someday... (for more news or really lack thereof on that front, check out my other blog here!)

But for my first time out, I'd definitely consider my Armchair BEA experience to be a success. For a change, it was nice not having to be the one to decide what I was going to post about because the organizers put together a really great calendar. Their website also made it nice and easy to share links to my posts with other bloggers, so I got to see a short spike in my readership too. Other bloggers participating left me some really interesting and insightful comments on what I was writing, and the whole week really helped me feel like I'm actually a part of this community. I made some great Twitter connections too, and I loved being reminded how even though so many people claim time and again that books are dropping in popularity and that in this age of technology the novel is becoming irrelevant, that sentiment could not be further from the truth. For five days I got to be part of a group that still has a voice that demands to be heard, shouting from the rooftops that books still do very much have a place in our world today and to ignore that fact is to refuse to see what is right in front of you.

So here's a hearty thank you to the amazing organizers of Armchair BEA. I enjoyed my 2012 experience and look forward to participating next year in 2013.

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About Me

There's never been a time when I didn't love books. I love them so much that I have a B.A. in English, an M.S. in Library & Information Science, I'm a high school librarian by day, and I'm an aspiring novelist by night.